Sinti
Encyclopedia
Sinti or Sinta or Sinte (sing. masc. Sinto; sing. fem. Sintisa) is the name of a Romani or Gypsy population in Europe. Traditionally nomadic, today only a small percentage of the group remains unsettled. In earlier times, they frequently lived on the outskirts of communities.
The Sinti speak the Sinti-Manouche
variety of Romani
, which exhibits strong German influence.
The origin of the name "Sinti/Sinte" is uncertain. It can be shown to have been adopted in the 18th century, possibly from a German-based secret language. It is often compared to the name of the Sindhi people
of South Asia
. Sindh
, a historical region in the Indian subcontinent
and today a province of Pakistan
, was invaded repeatedly by Mahmud Ghazni during the 11th century, causing many people to emigrate. That "Sinti" is derived from "Sindhi" is a notion popular among the Sinti themselves, but others have claimed that there is no basis for the comparison.
The Sinti arrived in Germany
and Austria
in the Middle Ages
, eventually splitting into two groups: Eftavagarja ("the Seven Caravans") and Estraxarja ("from Austria"). These two groups then expanded, the Eftavagarja into France
, where they are called "Manouches", and the Estraxarja into Italy
and Eastern Europe
, mainly what are now Croatia
, Slovenia
, Hungary
, Romania
, the Czech Republic
and Slovakia
, eventually adopting various regional names.
In Italy they are present mainly in Piedmont
region (where in Piedmontese they are called Sinto, although the word for Gypsies is sìngher, as the Italian zingaro), with some communities in Veneto
as well.
), Sinti and Roma were persecuted throughout Germany during the Nazi period - the Nuremberg Laws
of 1935 often being interpreted to apply to them as well as the Jews. Adolf Eichmann
recommended that the "Gypsy Question" be "solved" simultaneously with the Jewish Question
, resulting in the deportation of the Sinti to clear room to build homes for ethnic Germans. Some were sent to Poland
, or elsewhere (including some deported to Yugoslavia by the Hamburg police
in 1939), others were confined to designated areas, and many were eventually gassed.
In concentration camps, the Sinti were forced to wear either a black triangle, indicating their classification as 'asocial', or a brown triangle, specifically reserved for Romani people.
Django Reinhardt
, who fused traditional dance hall musettes with American jazz of the day (1930s and 40s) and, along with Stéphane Grappelli
and the other members of the Quintette du Hot Club de France
, founded the style of music known as “Gypsy Jazz
”. (Reinhardt's recordings refer to him as a Gypsy.)
Other notable Sinti musicians include Drafi Deutscher
and the jazz
guitar
ists Jimmy Rosenberg
and Paulus Schäfer. The Sinto Häns'che Weis produced a record in Germany
in the 1970s in which he sang about the Poraimos (Romani Holocaust)
in his own language. Many younger Germans first learned about this part of Holocaust
history as a result of this recording. Titi Winterstein and several members of Reinhardt's clan
still play traditional and modern Gypsy jazz all over Europe. The jazz keyboardist Joe Zawinul
was also of Sinte (Sintenghero) descent.
Oto Pestner
is a notable Slovenia
n Sinti singer. He is known for his involvement with the New Swing Quartet, which sang mostly jazz
and swing classics. Pestner also sings gospel
and Slovenian folk music.
Sintis notable for their sporting achievements include Johann Trollmann, the 1933 boxing champion of Germany
, who was killed by the Nazis.
The Sinti speak the Sinti-Manouche
Sinti-Manouche language
Sinti-Manouche is the variety of Romani spoken by the Sinti people in Germany, France, Austria, some parts of northern Italy and other adjacent regions...
variety of Romani
Romani language
Romani or Romany, Gypsy or Gipsy is any of several languages of the Romani people. They are Indic, sometimes classified in the "Central" or "Northwestern" zone, and sometimes treated as a branch of their own....
, which exhibits strong German influence.
The origin of the name "Sinti/Sinte" is uncertain. It can be shown to have been adopted in the 18th century, possibly from a German-based secret language. It is often compared to the name of the Sindhi people
Sindhi people
Sindhis are a Sindhi speaking socio-ethnic group of people originating from Sindh, a province Formerly of British India, now in Pakistan. Today Sindhis that live in Pakistan belong to various religious denominations including Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Christianity...
of South Asia
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
. Sindh
Sindh
Sindh historically referred to as Ba'ab-ul-Islam , is one of the four provinces of Pakistan and historically is home to the Sindhi people. It is also locally known as the "Mehran". Though Muslims form the largest religious group in Sindh, a good number of Christians, Zoroastrians and Hindus can...
, a historical region in the Indian subcontinent
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...
and today a province of Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, was invaded repeatedly by Mahmud Ghazni during the 11th century, causing many people to emigrate. That "Sinti" is derived from "Sindhi" is a notion popular among the Sinti themselves, but others have claimed that there is no basis for the comparison.
History
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, eventually splitting into two groups: Eftavagarja ("the Seven Caravans") and Estraxarja ("from Austria"). These two groups then expanded, the Eftavagarja into France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, where they are called "Manouches", and the Estraxarja into Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
, mainly what are now Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
, Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
and Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
, eventually adopting various regional names.
In Italy they are present mainly in Piedmont
Piedmont
Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Provinces of...
region (where in Piedmontese they are called Sinto, although the word for Gypsies is sìngher, as the Italian zingaro), with some communities in Veneto
Veneto
Veneto is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about 5 million, ranking 5th in Italy.Veneto had been for more than a millennium an independent state, the Republic of Venice, until it was eventually annexed by Italy in 1866 after brief Austrian and French rule...
as well.
The Holocaust
Sinti and Roma had migrated to Germany in the late 15th century and converted to Christianity. Nonetheless, they were still generally accused of being beggars and thieves, and by 1899, the police kept a central register on Gypsies. Considered by the National Socialists to be racially inferior (see Nazism and RaceNazism and race
Nazism developed several theories concerning races. The Nazis claimed to scientifically measure a strict hierarchy of human race; at the top was the master race, the "Aryan race", narrowly defined by the Nazis as being identical with the Nordic race, followed by lesser races.At the bottom of this...
), Sinti and Roma were persecuted throughout Germany during the Nazi period - the Nuremberg Laws
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and antisemitism...
of 1935 often being interpreted to apply to them as well as the Jews. Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
recommended that the "Gypsy Question" be "solved" simultaneously with the Jewish Question
Jewish Question
The Jewish question encompasses the issues and resolutions surrounding the historically unequal civil, legal and national statuses between minority Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jews, particularly in Europe. The first issues discussed and debated by societies, politicians and writers in western and...
, resulting in the deportation of the Sinti to clear room to build homes for ethnic Germans. Some were sent to Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, or elsewhere (including some deported to Yugoslavia by the Hamburg police
Hamburg Police
The Hamburg Police is the German Landespolizei force for the city-state of Hamburg. Law enforcement in Germany is divided between federal and state agencies...
in 1939), others were confined to designated areas, and many were eventually gassed.
In concentration camps, the Sinti were forced to wear either a black triangle, indicating their classification as 'asocial', or a brown triangle, specifically reserved for Romani people.
Notable Sinti
Perhaps the most famous (and influential) Sinti musician is the guitar virtuosoVirtuoso
A virtuoso is an individual who possesses outstanding technical ability in the fine arts, at singing or playing a musical instrument. The plural form is either virtuosi or the Anglicisation, virtuosos, and the feminine form sometimes used is virtuosa...
Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...
, who fused traditional dance hall musettes with American jazz of the day (1930s and 40s) and, along with Stéphane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands....
and the other members of the Quintette du Hot Club de France
Quintette du Hot Club de France
Quintette du Hot Club de France was a jazz group founded in France in 1934 by guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli, and active in one form or another until 1948....
, founded the style of music known as “Gypsy Jazz
Gypsy jazz
Gypsy jazz is an idiom often said to have been started by guitarist Jean "Django" Reinhardt in the 1930s. Because its origins are largely in France it is often called by the French name, "Jazz manouche," or alternatively, "manouche jazz," even in English language sources...
”. (Reinhardt's recordings refer to him as a Gypsy.)
Other notable Sinti musicians include Drafi Deutscher
Drafi Deutscher
Drafi Deutscher was a German singer and composer of Sinti origin.-Biography:He was born Drafi Franz Richard Deutscher in Berlin. His best known song was the 1965 Schlager "Marmor, Stein und Eisen bricht" which sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc...
and the jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
ists Jimmy Rosenberg
Jimmy Rosenberg
Joseph Rosenberg is a Sinto-Romani guitarist from Netherlands, known for his virtuoso playing of Gypsy jazz and other related styles....
and Paulus Schäfer. The Sinto Häns'che Weis produced a record in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in the 1970s in which he sang about the Poraimos (Romani Holocaust)
Porajmos
The Porajmos was the attempt made by Nazi Germany, the Independent State of Croatia, Horthy's Hungary and their allies to exterminate the Romani people of Europe during World War II...
in his own language. Many younger Germans first learned about this part of Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
history as a result of this recording. Titi Winterstein and several members of Reinhardt's clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
still play traditional and modern Gypsy jazz all over Europe. The jazz keyboardist Joe Zawinul
Joe Zawinul
Josef Erich Zawinul was an Austrian-American jazz keyboardist and composer.First coming to prominence with saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, Zawinul went on to play with trumpeter Miles Davis, and to become one of the creators of jazz fusion, an innovative musical genre that combined jazz with...
was also of Sinte (Sintenghero) descent.
Oto Pestner
Oto Pestner
Oto Pestner is one of the most prominent singers and composers of popular music from Slovenia, born in 1956 in Ljubljana. Until 2008 he was the leader of the Slovene vocal group New Swing Quartet....
is a notable Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
n Sinti singer. He is known for his involvement with the New Swing Quartet, which sang mostly jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and swing classics. Pestner also sings gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
and Slovenian folk music.
Sintis notable for their sporting achievements include Johann Trollmann, the 1933 boxing champion of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, who was killed by the Nazis.
Further reading
- Walter Winter, Struan Robertson (Translator). Winter Time: Memoirs of a German who Survived Auschwitz. Hertfordshire Publications, (2004), ISBN 1-902806-38-7.
- Reviewed by Emma Brockes "We had the same pain" in The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
November 29, 2004.
- Reviewed by Emma Brockes "We had the same pain" in The Guardian
External links
- Non-Jewish Victims of Persecution in Nazi Germany on the Yad VashemYad VashemYad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
website - Wege nach Ravensbrück (Ravensbrück concentration campRavensbrück concentration campRavensbrück was a notorious women's concentration camp during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück ....
: Memories of surviving female Sinti) - F. N. Finck, Lehrbuch des Dialekts der deutschen Zigeuner (1903) on Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...